PDF RAG Search MCP server

This MCP server enables semantic PDF search capabilities with OCR, FAISS, and transformers. Connect it to any MCP client to retrieve intelligent answers based on your PDF documents. The server processes and indexes your PDFs, allowing you to query them with natural language.

Installation

Prerequisites

Before installing the RAG MCP server, ensure you have the following prerequisites:

• Python 3.x
• UV package manager
• Tesseract OCR engine

Setting Up the Environment

First, create a virtual environment and install the required dependencies:

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
uv init rag_mcp
cd rag_mcp
uv venv
source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install -r requirements.txt
brew install tesseract

Making Scripts Executable

Make the necessary scripts executable:

chmod +x start.sh
chmod +x rag.py

Configuration

For Claude Desktop

Add the RAG MCP server configuration to your Claude Desktop:

code ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

Add the following configuration (replace XXX with your username):

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "rag": {
            "command": "/Users/XXX/.local/bin/uv",
            "args": [
                "--directory",
                "/Users/XXX/Documents/RAG_MCP",
                "run",
                "rag.py"
            ]
        }
    }
}

For Cursor MCP Client

To configure the RAG MCP server for Cursor:

code ~/.cursor/mcp.json

Add the following configuration (replace XXX with your username):

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "rag": {
            "command": "/Users/XXX/Documents/RAG_MCP/start.sh",
            "args": []
        }
    }
}

Usage

Starting the MCP Server

For Claude Desktop, run the server with:

uv run rag.py

For Cursor, the server will be started automatically via the configured start.sh script.

Querying PDFs

Once the server is running, you can use your MCP client to query your PDF documents. For example:

Parse the pdfs and tell me about 18 Church St. and what significance it has.

The server will process your PDFs, use OCR if needed, and provide intelligent answers based on the content of your documents.

How to install this MCP server

For Claude Code

To add this MCP server to Claude Code, run this command in your terminal:

claude mcp add-json "rag" '{"command":"/Users/XXX/Documents/RAG_MCP/start.sh","args":[]}'

See the official Claude Code MCP documentation for more details.

For Cursor

There are two ways to add an MCP server to Cursor. The most common way is to add the server globally in the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file so that it is available in all of your projects.

If you only need the server in a single project, you can add it to the project instead by creating or adding it to the .cursor/mcp.json file.

Adding an MCP server to Cursor globally

To add a global MCP server go to Cursor Settings > Tools & Integrations and click "New MCP Server".

When you click that button the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file will be opened and you can add your server like this:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "rag": {
            "command": "/Users/XXX/Documents/RAG_MCP/start.sh",
            "args": []
        }
    }
}

Adding an MCP server to a project

To add an MCP server to a project you can create a new .cursor/mcp.json file or add it to the existing one. This will look exactly the same as the global MCP server example above.

How to use the MCP server

Once the server is installed, you might need to head back to Settings > MCP and click the refresh button.

The Cursor agent will then be able to see the available tools the added MCP server has available and will call them when it needs to.

You can also explicitly ask the agent to use the tool by mentioning the tool name and describing what the function does.

For Claude Desktop

To add this MCP server to Claude Desktop:

1. Find your configuration file:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
• Linux: ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

2. Add this to your configuration file:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "rag": {
            "command": "/Users/XXX/Documents/RAG_MCP/start.sh",
            "args": []
        }
    }
}

3. Restart Claude Desktop for the changes to take effect